The sea, the sea ...

When I was a child growing up in Glasgow, the highlight of my year - as I'm sure I've said before on here - was the annual 8 week holiday in a cottage on Arran, where my first love was playing on the beach, in and out of the sea, later growing to encompass the hills when I was big enough to climb them. But for the rest of the year in the city I dreamed of these beaches, and the other world that they seemed to represent. Sometimes if the weather was good in the Easter holidays we'd take the train to the accessible seaside, which for a car-free family in the west end of Glasgow usually meant Helensburgh. (Did we ever go to Ayr? I can't think of it, looking at Arran without getting there). We'd come out of the station and walk down to the shore road and I'd look at the sea, the same sea of my dreams but somehow confined by sea walls, railings, a drop from the road putting the shore out of my reach ...

And that's what I was thinking of this afternoon as I took a solitary walk along the East Bay in the sun that had only just appeared, leaving Himself to go to a physio appointment which in turn gave me the freedom to stop annoyingly every few yards to look and photograph and remember. On the way back I dropped in on my friend Paddy, who was engaged in draining her garden pond because a recent incursion by her puppy had resulted in a torn liner, the repair of which had been followed by a sudden clouding of the water which was now a rather pea-soup colour of green. We observed the careful positioning of the hose that was syphoning the water into the burn over the wall at the end of the garden, admiring the way hydraulics just ... worked and the fortitude of her American visitor who had sucked the hose to get it started. Himself joined us, the American and her ex-navy, ex-Holy Loch Site One joined us, and we all stood in the sun, CND me and USN them, reminiscing about the past in complete amity. 

A gentle sort of day, really - I'm hideously sore all over, probably because of an adventure involving the bath (I've been having showers since before Christmas) and screaming muscles and tendons. With any luck I shall be in bed before midnight, and that will be A Good Thing. The sky outside isn't yet dark, and is completely clear.

I've chosen one of the photos I took along the front, showing my favourite blue-greens in the clear water and a wee line of the view of the other side.